When the laughter had subsided somewhat, the President asked ruefully, "How can I make my peace with them? I sent them to their room for an hour and promptly forgot all about the affair."
"I'll take them to the Missionary Meeting with me this afternoon," suggested Mrs. Campbell, "and you can come for us with the sleigh. Peace has begged to go over ever since she has been here. It seems that Mrs. Strong is an enthusiastic missionary worker, and Peace's greatest ambition is to be like her Saint Elspeth."
"So she can find another St. John and marry him," giggled Faith.
"Yes. I guess it is hard to decide which one of her saints she thinks the most of," Mrs. Campbell agreed; "but I am so glad she has chosen such a beautiful couple to pattern her own ideals after. Their friendship will do much for our little—" she intended to say "mischief-maker," but this white-haired woman with her mother instincts seemed to understand that Peace's mischief was never done for mischief's sake, so she changed the word to "sunshine-maker."
Thus it happened that when the brown eyes and the blue unclosed after their long nap, they looked up into the dear face of their grandmother-by-adoption, and saw by her tender smile that their punishment was ended. They were surprised to find how long they had slept, but the delight at being allowed to attend a grown-up missionary meeting, as Allee called it, overshadowed whatever resentment they might have felt at having been forgotten for so long a time, and they danced away through the snow beside Mrs. Campbell as happy and carefree as the little birds which they had fed yesterday.
The meeting was not as exciting as Peace had been led to expect from Mrs. Strong's enthusiastic recitals regarding missionary work, but some of the words spoken by the different ladies sank very deeply into the children's fertile brains, and both were so silent on the homeward journey behind the flying horses that finally Mrs. Campbell ventured to ask, "Are you tired, girlies? Was the meeting a disappointment to you?"
"Oh, no," Peace hastened to assure her. "I liked it lots, and Allee likes the same things I do, don't you, Allee? The women were pretty slow about doing things—they talked so long each time before they could make up their minds about anything. But it's int'resting to know that at last they decided to send some barrels to the poor ministers in the little places who don't get enough to live on. 'Twould have been better if they had done it before Christmas, though, so's the children wouldn't have thought Santa Claus had forgotten them. Do—do you think like Mrs. McGowan—that if we have two coats and someone else hasn't any, we ought to give away one of ours? That's what she said, isn't it?"
"Yes, that is what she said," Mrs. Campbell agreed; "and in a large measure I believe her doctrine, too. If we have more than we need and there are others less fortunate, I think we ought to share our blessings. But it takes a lot of good sense and tact to do this judicially."
"I think so, too," answered Peace with such a peculiar thrill in her voice that the President, at whose side she was sitting, turned and looked quizzically at the rapt face. "I don't b'lieve in talking a lot about giving and then when it comes to really doing it, to give just the left-over things that ain't any good to us any longer, and wouldn't be to anyone else, either."
"Why, what do you mean, child?" the woman asked, taken by surprise at such quaint observations from the fly-away little maid, whose serious thoughts were regarded as jokes even by her own family.